Worstward Ho by Samuel Beckett (Summary)

 

Worstward Ho

by Samuel Beckett

(Summary) 

Summary

Once upon a time—or perhaps, in no time at all—there was nothing left but a lone, trembling presence. It moved forward in the bleakest of landscapes, a place stripped of color, warmth, and hope. The world was silent, except for the faint, relentless murmur of a voice that spoke only of failure, decay, and endless striving.

This presence, fragile and determined, faced life’s most relentless truth: nothing ever goes right. Every step it took, every attempt it made, collapsed under the weight of existence itself. Things fell apart. Objects disintegrated. Hopes withered. Even movement seemed impossible. And yet, despite the futility, it continued.

“Ever worse,” it whispered, “let us go on.” And so it did. Each act, each gesture, was a labor against despair. It tried and failed, and tried again, in a world that offered no rewards and no consolation. Hands reached, fingers grasped, eyes searched—but always found absence, emptiness, ruin. Yet there was a strange rhythm to this struggle: in the very act of failing, of breaking and being broken, there was a pulse of life, faint but undeniable.

The presence learned a harsh truth: perfection was unattainable, salvation was a myth, and every achievement was temporary. Only the act of moving, of pushing, of attempting—even in failure—remained. “Ever worse,” it repeated, embracing the fall, the collapse, the endless decay, as if these failures themselves were a kind of progress.

Time and again, the world reduced itself to its simplest elements: broken things, wasted efforts, and the quiet insistence of trying once more. And in this stripped-down, desperate effort, the presence found its strange companion: persistence. The world was worstward, ever falling, but the presence, alone and fragile, went forward. Step by step. Fall by fall. Nothing left but the act of moving toward what was worse.

And so the story ends—or never ends, for perhaps it was never meant to. Nothing is gained. Nothing is saved. But the presence keeps going, always worse, always forward, in the unrelenting embrace of failure, in the grim poetry of trying against a world that refuses to stand still or give way.